In telecommunications terms it was the sale of the century, as 50,000 mobile phone owners enjoyed up to four days of toll-free calls. Yet Eircell says most people did not take advantage of it.
The opportunity to make that call, at the expense of their phone company, fell to owners of Eircell's Ready To Go (RTG) phones, which require owners to pay in advance for calls using special pre-paid cards.
A flood at the company's mobile phone exchange in Hely House, Dublin, last Friday afternoon, marked the start of three days of free phoning. For the lucky 50,000 customers - one in eight RTG phone owners - no matter how many calls they made, and no matter how far they called, the credit on their pre-paid cards remained stubbornly stagnant.
Eircell said it was aware of the problem, but allowed it continue. The mobile phone system had to be shut down as a result of the flood and safety was the company's first priority, followed by the need to restore service.
The problems meant Eirecell staff could not access the call credit details of some RTG customers. The loss of service on Friday affected all customers, Eircell head of corporate affairs, Ms Edel Clancy, said. "The only other way to deal with this small minority of customers would have been to turn off their service before we could get them back on the platform."
The mobile phone service was fully restored by 4 a.m. on Saturday, and work then continued on trying to reset the credit of RTG users.
But it was late on Monday night before the free service ended for the last of the RTG users.
However, late last night a caller to The Irish Times claimed he was still getting free calls.
For phone addicts, the weekend situation was on a par with the fantasy situation of the faulty ATM which churns out cash. However, Eircell insists that customers did not take advantage of the crisis. Ms Clancy said the firm had monitored the number of free calls made on RTG phones, but the quantity was not large.